1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for collecting specimens and, more particularly, to systems and methods for collecting pathology specimens.
2. Description of the Background
During a doctor visit or a hospital stay, patients are oftentimes required to leave a sample of urine, blood, stool, or other biological sample for analysis. In addition, in outpatient or inpatient scenarios, doctors, nurses, or other healthcare professionals may collect tissue, fluid, a foreign body, a tumor, or other pathology specimen for analysis. Whether a biological or a pathology specimen is collected, specific procedures must be followed to prevent contamination and to properly track the specimen as belonging to a particular patient. These procedures may be very different for biological and pathology specimens.
A prior art method 20 for collection of biological specimens, such as blood, urine, stool, or other biological samples, is depicted in FIG. 1. During a medical evaluation, a physician or other healthcare professional determines at block 22 that labwork is necessary. The physician then places an order for one or more tests at block 24 and thereafter sends the order to a Laboratory Information System (LIS) at block 26, which is a system that receives, processes, and stores information generated by medical laboratory processes. An accession number is created for the order and one or more container number(s) are created for the order and the specimens, respectively, at block 28.
Still referring to FIG. 1, at block 30, a wristband that is attached to a wrist of the patient is scanned to perform a positive patient identification. Once the wristband is scanned, patient information will be displayed on a screen on a monitor or other visual display. The patient information may include the patient's name, date of birth, sex, bed number, age, patient number, or any other relevant patient information. The user of the system 20, which is likely a healthcare professional, thereafter confirms the patient's identification. The system proceeds to the screen seen in FIG. 3 at block 32, wherein the screen displays all orders for the patient.
The healthcare professional proceeds with collection of the specimen at block 34 and selects one or more containers for collection at block 36. Specifically, the healthcare professional selects all containers that have been collected from the screen shown in FIG. 4. The healthcare professional then prints one or more labels for the container(s) at block 38 and affixes the labels to the appropriate container(s) at block 40. The one or more containers are thereafter forwarded to one or more laboratories for analysis at block 42.
As noted above, procedures for biological specimen collection differ from procedures for pathology specimen collection. The current electronic processes for biological specimen collection are not practical for pathology specimen collection. With biological specimen collections, necessary laboratory tests are generally identified ahead of time based on procedure, symptoms, etc. For example, a patient complaining of chest pain may automatically receive a cardiac profile or a patient with a history of cancer may automatically have a liver panel done. In biological specimen collection, a healthcare professional may therefore use their system to place an order for laboratory tests and the LIS may create an accession number before the sample is collected. This accession number is a unique identification that is used throughout the analysis process. In contrast, physicians and surgeons generally do not know ahead of time whether a pathology specimen will need to be collected (i.e., the physician or surgeon may not know until they are in the middle of a procedure what testing will be required). Pathology specimens therefore do not have a pre-collection accession number. Existing specimen collection applications therefore do not have the capability of creating uniquely-identified pathology labels for tracking of pathology specimens.
A prior art manual system and method 60 for collection of pathology specimens, such as tissue, fluid, a foreign body, a tumor, or any other pathology specimen, is depicted in FIG. 5. Prior to a surgical procedure, a patient is identified by a nurse, physician, or other healthcare professional, generally by asking the patient their name, date of birth and possibly checking their medical record number (MRN), financial identification number (FIN), and/or visit number manually. The MRN is an identification number given to a patient by a particular hospital. The FIN is an identification number that is assigned to a patient for a particular visit or patient encounter and is used for billing purposes. During a surgical procedure, a doctor may determine that a pathology specimen needs to be collected (at block 82). A requisition form or similar request documentation or mechanism is manually created prior to or during the surgical procedure at block 84 to specify information, such as the surgeon, the receiving nurse, a pre-operative diagnosis, and the surgery date and time. At block 86, one or more labels is thereafter manually created with the patient's name and identification, for example, the patient's MRN or FIN, and a written description of the specimen collected. The label(s) is affixed to one or more specimen containers at block 88 and the container(s) are forwarded to the laboratory for analysis at block 90, along with the requisition form.
At the laboratory, staff manually compares and verifies the requisition forms or similar request documentation or mechanism and the pathology specimens at block 92 and creates an order in a computer system, such as a Laboratory Information System (LIS) or Pathology Information System (PATH) system, at block 94. Data is manually entered into the computer system from the written requisition form. An accession number is created at block 96 and labels are printed at block 98 from a LIS/PATH system, which is a system that integrates operations of testing laboratories. The container is thereafter overlabeled by placing the LIS/PATH label(s) over the manually-generated label(s) from block 86 at 100.
The current manual process for pathology specimen collection is very time consuming and error prone. This results from a number of factors, including the lack of positive patient identification using a computer-based system, lack of a unique identification number for each collected specimen, lack of tracking using a unique specimen identifier from point of collection to the remote laboratory for processing, and the manual input of patient and anatomical descriptions about the pathology specimen available only at the time of collection (not at the time of data entry in the remote pathology lab).